BRANT: A Versatile and Extendable Resting-State fMRI Toolkit

• Main Authors: Kaibin Xu, Yong Liu, Yafeng Zhan, Jiaji Ren, Tianzi Jiang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
• Subjects: BRANT; resting-state fMRI; code-generated GUI; preprocessing; visualization
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2018.00052/full

Data processing toolboxes for resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) have provided us with a variety of functions and user friendly graphic user interfaces (GUIs). However, many toolboxes only cover a certain range of functions, and use exclusively designed GUIs. To facilitate data processing and alleviate the burden of manually drawing GUIs, we have developed a versatile and extendable MATLAB-based toolbox, BRANT (BRAinNetome fmri Toolkit), with a wide range of rs-fMRI data processing functions and code-generated GUIs. During the implementation, we have also empowered the toolbox with parallel computing techniques, efficient file handling methods for compressed file format, and one-line scripting. In BRANT, users can find rs-fMRI batch processing functions for preprocessing, brain spontaneous activity analysis, functional connectivity analysis, complex network analysis, statistical analysis, and results visualization, while developers can quickly publish scripts with code-generated GUIs.